My wallet is offline, on a USB. (and backed up). But I wonder this too! Once I put my wallet back in my client, then what? Bye, bye coins?? Hello invisible thef?

I think being a mac user helps me. I've done a full system clean just to be safe!

You can use "block explorer" to check your balance (tho it only shows some of your wallets balance?? For reasons too complicated for me to understand *via wikki) kind of makes it look like coins were stolen?!

its true, but nothing you can do about it. the bitcoin client Needs encryption and doesn't have it yet. the best thing you can do is keep virus definitions up to date and keep most of your bitcoins stored in a account you don't access often(as well as keep it encrypted with some random name in another location?.. or just follow the forum tutorials :S ). I'm not sure about this, but it seems like a good idea to me, but we really need a forum topic about this to get a discussion about it going, But you could use "TAILS" and that would probably be Vary secure, you would just need to keep your USB or CD Secure from RL people. from my understanding, its a bootable OS from a USB stick or a CD, pop it in most any PC or laptop and turn the PC on and it will load the OS into memory(never using the hard drive) taking the usb out will wipe its memory(not hard drive lol) and restart the PC. as a added bonus, TAILS forces *ALL* internet connections through the encrypted TOR network for anonymity.

if you don't know about TOR, Read up on it! its been around for Many years now and they definitely seem to know what they are doing. so if /they/ trust tails,i trust tails... only issue is if the bootable OS gets a virus(?) but if you *only* use it when you need to access your "bank account wallet"... chances of getting a virus.. is... vary low? im not a PC guru by any means, but the difficulty in hacking into that is /much/ higher then some simple virus that simply copies your wallet.dat .. for starters, it would probably have to alter your PC's boot process replacing files @_@ so it could be forced to load a virus into memory... so it could be run to steal your wallet.dat *somehow*. probably not something you will have to worry about for awhile, and could probalyl get around that by having a Dedicated PC box to load your USB/CD TAILS OS onto. then only way to get a virus is if someone breaks into your house and plants one or you get one while the OS is booted.

FYI i REALLY don't know, but if i were going to secure mine, i think that is how id do it. that said... research this stuff yourself and form your own opinion before trusting a complete strangers.